Tony-winning stage-and-screen icon Bette Midler is the latest star attached to the highly anticipated Gloria Steinem biopic The Glorias: A Life on the Road, according to Variety. Midler is in negotiations to portray New York-based attorney Bella Abzug, who took part in the antiwar group Women Strike for Peace and later went on to serve as a U.S. representative.

Midler took home a 2017 Tony Award for her turn in the title role of Hello, Dolly! She is also a two-time Grammy winner, three-time Emmy winner and two-time Academy Award nominee.Read More

Mister D: Sophie von Haselberg has completed another movie entitled, Ask For Jane, which is based on real events. It’s the story of a group of college aged women who develop “an underground abortion network that helped over 10,000 women get illegal abortions in Chicago between 1968 and 1973. The movie gets high praise from feminist warrior, Gloria Steinem. Rachel Carey directed and wrote the script. It’s scheduled to be released in 2018

Plot Summary: In 1968 Chicago, young college student Susan takes a step outside her normal, sheltered life to help a desperate friend find a safe but illegal abortion. Susan and her more radical dormmate Janice form a friendship as they start providing the doctor’s number to other desperate women — until the doctor angrily refuses to help them. Instead of giving up, the young women decide to think bigger. Susan and her friends form the Jane Collective: a secret organization to help other women obtain safe abortions by connecting them with doctors who will provide the service safely and at low cost. Susan sacrifices her career plans, her boyfriend, and even her relationship with her mother in the name of helping women in need. When the women of Jane are eventually arrested, they face the ultimate test of their commitment to the cause and to each other.

There are now two ‘Jane’ underground projects on their way in Hollywood. An indie film Ask For Jane is just now getting underway in New York from Cait Johnston and co-starring this year’s Emmy-nominated actress Alison Wright (The Americans). That follows a very similar project from Amazon, who bought a spec titled This is Jane based on Laura Kaplan’s non-fiction book The Story of Jane: The Legendary Underground Feminist Abortion Service. Amazon picked that up earlier this year.

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Both projects are based on the historic true story of the underground abortion network in Chicago created by college called The Jane Collective, which helped over 11,000 women get illegal abortions in Chicago between 1969 and 1973 before Roe v. Wade allowed legal abortions. The indie film will also feature a cameo from Judith Arcana, a writer, activist and real life member of The Janes, who is acting as a consulting producer on the film.

Ask For Jane is currently shooting and stars producer Johnston (The Knick, Ripped!), Sarah Ramos (Parenthood, Midnight, Texas), the aforementioned Wright (who was also in Feud: Bette and Joan), Cody Horn (Magic Mike, Demonic), Sarah Steele (Spanglish, The Good Wife, The Humans), Chloe Levine (The Transfiguration, Netflix’s The OA) and Ben Rappaport (Mr. Robot, For the People & Hope Springs).

The film was written and directed by first-time feature filmmaker Rachel Carey. The female-focused film is produced by Carolines Entertainment’s Caroline Hirsch (founder of Carolines on Broadway comedy club) and NYEH Entertainment’s Josh Folan (The Light of the Moon).

In 2016, filmmaker Carey and Johnston’s limited series Ask for Jane was one of three finalists chosen in the New York Television Festival Works 4 Progress Initiative with Participant Media.

The film follows both the women and men who, during this time in America when abortions were illegal, reproductive rights were being challenged and birth control wasn’t easily accessible or morally accepted, worked behind the scenes to keep reproductive rights for all women by helping women attain abortions. The ‘Janes’ wrote their own rules and damned the law.

“So many of the lawmakers trying to restrict abortion access (today) have never even considered the disparate reasons why a woman might be driven to seek one,” said creator, producer and star Johnston. “Ask For Jane beautifully depicts a few of their stories, and illustrates how vital it is to keep this procedure legal and safe,”

“Ask For Jane is an incredibly impactful and timely story, that inspires us to act and protect,” said producer Caroline Hirsch, “At a time when women still struggle for reproduction rights, we cannot wait to bring the actions of such a brave group of women and men to the screen as a reminder that we need to continue fighting.”

Ask for Jane is produced by Hirsch, Folan and Johnston; executive producers are Raptor Films’ Cathleen Ihasz and Nicole Ihasz.

Even in death, Hugh Hefner—who died in late September at the age of 91—continues to be a creep. As he arranged way back in 1992, he’ll be buried next to Marilyn Monroe, whose nude photos he published without her consent or knowledge in the first issue of Playboy. The male-gazer in chief sleeps eternally next to the world’s most fetishized sex object. The ancient toad who bullied a harem of grossed-out would-be starlets rests beside the ill-used beauty who was smart, kind, well-read, didn’t have an orgasm until the end of her life, and described herself as a “sexless sex goddess.” If only Marilyn could get up and go lie down next to someone else.

Looking back, it seems incredible that Playboy was ever taken for a liberatory text, even in the stodgy 1950s. “Can man be free if woman be a slave?” the poet Shelley asked in 1818. Hefner’s answer was: Absolutely—that’s the whole point! Instead of (or in addition to) a graying, aproned wife, three kids, a boring job, and a mortgage, you could, as Hefner described the Playboy life in the first issue, “enjoy mixing up cocktails and an hors d’oeuvre or two, putting a little mood music on the phonograph, and inviting in a female acquaintance for a quiet discussion on Picasso, Nietzsche, jazz, sex.” You might say that Hefner invented the toxic bachelor. Left unmentioned: You’ve still got that boring job, even if, like Hefner, you ditched the wife and kids. If you go by the ads—cars, stereos, liquor—being a playboy involved making a lot of upscale purchases. Also, poor Nietzsche. His fans are just the worst.

Playboy published important fiction and reportage in its day, whether to give adults an excuse to buy the magazine, or to fill out the fantasy of “sophistication” as a (largely successful) bid for cultural respectability. Back in the day, its libertarianism extended to support for civil rights, abortion rights, and free-speech issues, which gained it many friends among the kind of people who read The Nation. Indeed, in 2015 our own Victor Navasky won a lifetime-achievement award from the Hugh M. -Hefner Foundation. The list of judges and awardees is like an honor roll of the progressive great and good. Zephyr Teachout! Who knew.

The stumbling block, of course, was feminism. Gloria Steinem went undercover as a bunny at Hefner’s New York Playboy Club and exposed the many indignities of the job. “Hugh Hefner is my enemy,” said Susan Brownmiller when she appeared with Hefner on The Dick Cavett Show in 1970, and the feeling was definitely mutual. “These chicks are our natural enemy,” Hefner wrote in an internal memo. “They are unalterably opposed to the romantic boy-girl society that Playboy promotes.” How half-naked waitresses dressed in rabbit costumes and cartoons showing rape as lighthearted fun serve to promote a “romantic boy-girl society” is hard to explain. But then so are the many dark episodes of life in the Playboy Mansion: In 2014, Judy Huth filed a lawsuit claiming that Bill Cosby sexually assaulted her in the mansion in 1974, when she was 15 years old; a former valet is now telling the tabloids about late-’70s “pig nights,” in which Hefner’s male friends were serviced by prostitutes. The valet also recounted instances in which Hefner—more than once!—abandoned bunnies at the hospital when their breast implants burst. In her tell-all memoir Down the Rabbit Hole, Holly Madison—one of the very young Hefner “girlfriends” featured on the reality show The Girls Next Door—painted a harrowing picture of her time in the mansion. The women living there had a 9 pm curfew and were constantly degraded and belittled, and sex with Hefner was mandatory. Even fellow next-door girl Kendra Wilkinson, who presented a much more positive version of events in her own memoir, admitted that “I had to be very drunk or smoke lots of weed to survive those nights—there was no way around it.” You have to ignore a lot of human suffering to buy the notion that “Hef” was a fun-guy genius who brought us sexual liberation. “Why lionize Hugh Hefner, a pig, a pornographer & a predator too?” Bette Midler tweeted. “I once went to the ‘mansion’ in ’68 and got the clap walking thru the door.”

What brought us whatever sexual liberation we now possess was reliable contraception, legal abortion, and, yes, feminism. It was feminism that encouraged women to consider their own pleasure, cut through the Freudian nonsense about vaginal orgasms and “frigidity,” mainstreamed female masturbation as a way to learn about one’s body, and pointed out, insistently, that women are not objects for male consumption. That last one seems a little quaint now that the most hard-core porn—stuff that makes Playboy centerfolds look like Victorian valentines—is just a click away, and important feminist thinkers and activists seem unable to say that this isn’t a good thing. It’s easier to wave away the critics of porn as Dworkinite killjoys and prudes and talk some more about freedom of speech.

Actually, Andrea Dworkin had a point about pornography (a category in which she would have included Playboy) not being great for women’s equality or pleasure. Her big mistake—one of them, anyway—was to think that it could be outlawed. Even if there were no First Amendment, porn is simply too popular, too profitable, and, especially now thanks to the Internet, too pervasive for a democratic society to proscribe it—even if we could agree on what it was.

We rightly use the First Amendment to defend expression, but “it’s legal” isn’t the last word on whether it has value. After we invoke the importance of free speech—and the courts, in their wisdom, have declared many things speech that don’t involve words, like stripping and flag burning and (we’ll see) baking cakes—we can still critique the actual content. Does it enlarge our perspective, does it make for wisdom, is it just or beautiful, does it help us to be better people, more interesting, or even just more amusing? Why is it so hard to ask what kind of a world we make when we hail as heroic a man who saw women as a pair of implanted breasts with a sell-by date of their 25th birthday? It’s a conversation that Hugh Hefner did a great deal to suppress. It’s too late for Marilyn, but not for us. Now that he’s dead, let’s talk.

The ERA is a proposed amendment to the United States Constitution that would expressly prohibit discrimination against girls and women on the basis of gender. Today, the Constitution does not guarantee equal rights for women. As the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia stated: “Certainly the Constitution does not require discrimination on the basis of sex. The only issue is whether it prohibits it. It doesn’t.”

In 1972, the Equal Rights Amendment was passed by the House and the Senate but fell short of the required number of states for ratification by the 1982 deadline. Earlier this year, Nevada became the first state in 40 years to vote for ratification of the ERA. Nevada’s action highlights the growing awareness of and support for the Equal Rights Amendment, which is needed to help women secure justice when they face gender-based discrimination and violence. Women get paid on average 80 cents for every dollar a white man makes, according to the

The Huffington Post
7 Life Lessons From â€˜The First Wives Clubâ€™ You Should Know
For Vogue, by Brooke Bobb.
09/29/2016

The year was 1996 and the women were Bette Midler, Goldie Hawn, and Diane Keaton. The song was Lesley Goreâ€™s â€œYou Donâ€™t Own Me.â€ The movie was an epic ode to female empowerment, and it was called The First Wives Club. Today marks 20 years since its release, and the filmâ€™s sarcastic, brilliantly colorful feminist undertones couldnâ€™t be more on point. After being jolted and cheated on, Brenda (Midler), Annie (Keaton), and Elise (Hawn) band together to form a coalition in order to seek justice from their egotistical, manipulative dogs of ex-husbands. Itâ€™s irreverent and oh so true, and even if you arenâ€™t a die-hard Gloria Steinem devoteeâ€”she even has a cameo in the filmâ€”any woman can appreciate the First Wives Club â€œhear me roarâ€ campaign. Really, youâ€™re not alone if youâ€™ve secretly danced and sung along with the ladies at the end: â€œAnd donâ€™t tell me what to do! / And donâ€™t tell me what to say!â€

Take them or leave them, lean in or lean out, these women are ones we all wanted to emulate after the movieâ€™s releaseâ€”and today we still totally do. So drop your wedding band in a class of champagne, toast to chick flicks and independence, and heed these seven shreds of real-life wisdom from The First Wives Club.

COURTESY OF VOGUE

1. Success is the best revenge.

â€œLadies, you have to be strong and independent, and remember, donâ€™t get mad, get everything.â€ â€”Ivana Trump

COURTESY OF VOGUE

2. Always tell it like it is.

â€œIâ€™m saying this to you with love, compassion, and the spirit of true sisterhood: You are full of shit!â€ â€”Brenda

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3. Donâ€™t make excuses for your vices. Â

â€œI drink because I am a sensitive and highly strung person!â€ â€”Elise

5. Making false justifications to yourself will lead you astray (and maybe toward overinjecting).

â€œPlastic surgery is like good grooming; itâ€™s like brushing your teeth.â€ â€”Elise

COURTESY OF VOGUE

6. Face the facts.

â€œAaron is so terrific, weâ€™ve been married for 25 years, and Chris is just perfect, lesbians are great nowadays and, well, the marriage is going to be really fine, Aaron and I, you know weâ€™re temporarily, sort of, just a little bit . . . weâ€™re separated.â€ â€”Annie

In March, we celebrate Womenâ€™s History Month and the many achievements that have been made to foster an environment where women have equal access and opportunity.

For young women today, we have hit the historical jackpot. We operate in a world that our mothers, and mothersâ€™ mothers yearned for but did not have access to.

Though great strides have been made, and we all acknowledge there is much more work to do, I am starting to wonder just what is happening to the meaning of feminism in a world where 140 character tweets and Facebook posts dominate much of the conversation on gender equality.

Last month, Kim Kardashian posted two semi-nude photos that elicited responses from the likes of Bette Midler and Piers Morgan, but the most interesting responses to me where from other women defending the posts as examples of feminism, and Kardashian as a new-age feminist icon.

Call me old fashioned, but not everything is feminism.

Feminism is not easy. There seems to be this cultural push by young women who have grown up in the digital age to apply feminism to almost everything. As Ariel Levy puts it, â€œWhy is this the â€˜new feminismâ€™ and not what it looks like: old objectification?â€

We are supposed to congratulate Kardashian because it was her choice to show those pictures, it is her brand, and she is an entrepreneur. Gloria Steinem was often criticized by others because of her traditional feminine appeal, but she didnâ€™t launch a womenâ€™s rightâ€™s movement by taking off her shirt. She did it by advocating for the rights of others, through grassroots efforts, by tirelessly calling attention to the inequities she and her fellow female peers faced.

To me, Kardashianâ€™s posts are as feminist as Girls Gone Wild â€“ not at all. At a time in history where women are leading the way in next generation industries we havenâ€™t seen before, it is important to remember the original call to action. To be seen as more than a girl in dress, more than a pretty woman on a cover of a magazine, more than an object to be desired. Donâ€™t get me wrong, I have no problem with the posts, I just object to the categorization of them as furthering a long fought battle for equality. Feminism is supposed to encourage us to think critically about the world around us â€“ it is supposed to serve as a lens through which we view the world. When we justify everything as a feminist action, we stop thinking critically about where these notions of feminism come from.

I am sure there are many people who will read this and see it as a â€˜feministâ€™ overreaction to a rather mundane ordeal. Something not worth the space it is taking up. They are probably wondering if I have anything else to say other than discussing feminism. The answer is I do. I have lots of other issues I would love to use this platform for, the thing is, this topic right here impacts my life chances and choices. It shapes how people, especially men, view women and it impacts how young girls view themselves. So for now, I am happy to use this platform to hopefully encourage people to question the images they see and think about the movement that started it all.

Jarin R. Eisenberg is the executive director of Melbourne Main Street.